EXCLUSIVE
Jat returns to Dubai

Dubai awaits Jat
After more than a year the national carrier of Serbia will resume flights to Dubai on April 01, 2010. The decision was made after Jat reached an agreement for a lucrative special prorate agreement (SPA) with Emirates Airlines to be signed.

Over a year ago Jat was forced to terminate flights to Dubai after Emirates decided to end cooperation with all smaller European airlines. Jat primarily operated flights to Dubai for its passengers to and from Australia which could connect via Dubai to and from several Australian cities. With a reshuffling at the top of Emirates in the second half of 2009, the airline changed its policy and invited Jat for talks in November 2009 which were successfully completed a few days ago. In May 2009 Jat began services to Abu Dhabi in hope it could transfer passengers to Australia with Etihad Airways. However, the service was not overwhelmingly popular as it recorded smaller passenger numbers and connections to the Australian continent were almost non existent.

In 2007 Jat’s most profitable international office was Sydney, beating traditional rivals Zurich and Podgorica. The results were extremely successful thanks to the cooperation with Emirates. The Serbian carrier will hope to reproduce these results again this year.

Jat will operate the flights 2 times per week, increasing to 3 on May 10. The airline will use its new Boeing B737-700 on the route thus making it non stop. Still, in order for the airline to list the flights in reservation and booking systems it has added them as operating via Larnaca using the Boeing B737-300 until the order for the 2 Boeing 737-700s is finalised. Once it is, it will be modified in the system and the departure time from Belgrade will be shifted by 1 to 2 hours.

As a result, Jat will terminate flights to Abu Dhabi on February 04. Thanks to the new Dubai flights passengers from Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth in Australia and Auckland and Christchurch in New Zealand will have the ability to connect to Belgrade via Dubai within 2 hours upon landing. Jat will place services from Belgrade to Skopje and Ohrid in the afternoon so Macedonian passengers living in Australia can also use the new flights. As Dubai is a popular tourist destination Jat will hope to have tourists travelling solely on the Belgrade – Dubai sector. The airline is also pinning its hopes on the growing Serbian diaspora in the United Arab Emirates to boost passenger numbers as well.

Comments

  1. Anonymous09:11

    Valjda ce i cene biti konkurentne, druge avio kompanije trenutno nude nize cene od Etihada i JAT-a. Sta ce biti sa putnicima koji su vec rezevisali i platili karte za predstojece leto sa Etihadom i JAT-om? Mislim da je i dalje bolja veza Etihadom do Instambula a posle Turkis erlajnsom.

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  2. Anonymous09:37

    Hmmm good news for the people travelling down under. When are we going to know more about the 737-700? Do they have IFE?

    What is going to happen with Larnaca? Are they going to keep the twice a week flight to Tel Aviv?

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  3. Anonymous10:12

    Good news! Jat has been flying to Dubai for years and moving to AUH was forced, but known since the beggining, that it will not work.
    Passengers from Australia and New Zealand will be happy with short 2 hour connection. It would be good for Jat to offer good connections for pax to SKP, SJJ,TGD,...

    Waiting for the news about the upcoming 737-700, as someone said. Hope it will be a nice and modern one, with in flight entertainment system and all the other perks...

    Any other route planned in the Middle East for summer season? And in Europe? Barcelona. I guess???

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  4. peter from sydney12:49

    Fantastic news! Hope the fares are nice and cheap!

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  5. Moritz from Vienna16:54

    Not that surprise, cause they were announced a few weeks ago (JAT will fly to a second mid-east destination in S10).
    Or will there be one more new destination?

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  6. Does JAT still fly to Beirut?

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  7. ANONYMOUS02:22

    So EX-YU Aviation -

    When and where do you think the B737-700s are coming from?

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  8. frequentflyer03:25

    Anonymous (#3) - it all depends on whether they believe there is a market for O&D pax to cities served by JAT, and whether it fits in with the waves of flights. PUY, POW, LJU are possibilities also??

    SJJ (for example) pax will currently wait some 12+hrs for the flight with JAT as there is no daytime service (the argument is that there is no patronage for such flights, which I believe untrue). 2-3 daytime services (perhaps operated by JA, codeshared) could be a way of 'testing the waters' - I wouldn't be surprised if there was enough demand for twice-daily from BEG, and 17/18-weekly from ZAG (with reinstating of lunchtime flights).

    OU should also be offering flights to DXB - not only as competition to JAT or having the aircraft available for it, but to prove other alternatives to its network. The statistics show it can be done, from The Route Shop:
    Dubai is an emerging destination from Zagreb. In 2008 7,347 passengers traveled between Dubai and Zagreb an increase of 21%.

    That's only 2 weekly A319s, and we haven't seen the figures since then. Whether it has the potential to take pax away from *A partners (especially LH) travelling from Oceania and S.Africa (with large diaspora) is another story...

    It's roughly 5hr flying time in each direction from exYU to/from DXB so would require an aircraft away from home for 12hrs, quite different to the point-to-point flexibility the airlines normally get flying within Europe.

    ReplyDelete

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